"After School Chinese", developed by CCTV, aims to teach children aged 6 to 12 how to speak conversational chinese. In a pleasant learning atmosphere of 15 minutes per lesson per DVD, viewers can learn about 10 new words and 1 or 2 sentence patterns per lesson while learning about chinese culture.

Each Lesson has one or two situational dialogues that happens in places familiar to school children. The host, Donald Holder, an American teacher living in China, uses English to explain the content of the lessons after the dialogue ends in an immersion manner. Each of the new words has a english translation and is written in chinese characters and pinyin. Then the viewers see the word pronounced by two native chinese speakers. Afterward the host explains the new world in English and he will teach the viewers how to memorize the word in an easy way. After teaching new words in a lesson, the situational conversation is repeated and then the sentence patterns will be taught in the same way as the new words, except without the pinyin. Following the sentence patterns, substitutions will be introduced and the viewers can learn the various uses of sentence pattern.

With built in menu, you can choose to just view the dialogues, vocabulary or the entire lesson. Each level comes with 8 DVD lessons, 2 Audio CD, a disk containing a PDF of the student book in simplified chinese characters, romanized pinyin and english translation and a Parent/Teacher guide.

After School Chinese Level 1 contains:Lesson 1: GreetingsLesson 2: CountriesLesson 3: GoodbyeLesson 4: Where are you going?Lesson 5: Thank youLesson 6: DirectionsLesson 7: How much is it?Lesson 8: Days of the Week